


The Fear

by Tammany



Series: The Core Truths [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Crowley character study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:03:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is another story that's been begging to come out since the first viewing.Please note that, of all the characters in the story, it's Crowley who despairs entirely as Satan approaches.This is about that, and about Crowley, and about Crowley's fear...and the role of his Angel in all that.And in time, someday, it will be about Crowley rethinking God and the Fall, in light of things learned.Character study. Companion to Beautiful.Yes. I now I'm flooding the site. But I have a bit of time off, and a backlog of ideas I'm trying to get posted before I have to work some more.





	The Fear

What he did not say, what he could not say, was how the fear was always with him. Fear of almost everything. That the fear defined his entire life. There was the time before the fear—before any fear—and the time after the fear. There was the new, sudden fear of God. Of Satan. Of the other demons. Of the angels. Of holy water, once the sweetest substance in creation for him. Of Hellfire, which he could survive, but only by enduring it. Fear of making choices. Fear of engaging. Fear of his job. Fear of not doing his job. Fear of being rejected. Laughed at. Failing to impress—because he could no longer even imagine being loved.

Fear that his mask would fall, and people would see the fear that rode him like an ugly little troll, leering and vicious, claws dug into his heart.

He was cool because if it worked, the troll was hidden. He was reserved because it hid the fear. He was wary, because he understood consequences now, and he knew the game was rigged, and he didn’t have to wonder what those consequences were.

Sometimes he thought of how it was all supposed to play out, and he thought of holy water.

He’d seen other demons die of holy water. He knew it was now anguish and obliteration to any demon who touched it. But perhaps, as the agony took him, he’d feel one second of perfect cleanliness and fearless despair, before he was gone and the fear was over forever. Sometimes he would think that, when the fear got too great, and the endings seemed too ugly, he would get himself some holy water, and go looking for the end of all fears.

Then he met that damned angel, and it complicated things. Complicated them from the very beginning.

He’d talked with an angel—just the way he once had before the Fall. Same as standing around between choir numbers in Heaven, chatting about the latest of God’s top-hit creations. “Hey, She made a manta ray! Amaaaaaazing, yeah?” “Yeah, but what about the Crab Nebula, dude! Now that’s what I call divine creation!”

It had felt like being back in Heaven, just standing on the parapet of Eden, _talking_. Better—both of them aware of God’s judgement. Both a bit worried. Both still amazed at the wonder of what surrounded them.

Neither at war.

The angel—HIS angel, had given his flaming sword away!

Given it away. Because he was kind.

Because he was good.

Because he was brave--so brave!

He had still feared the angel a bit. Not that it stopped him. When you’re afraid of anything and everything, it turns into a kind of fearlessness—the best you could do was hope to choose the lesser terror, and that didn’t stop the constant desire to fight or fly or freeze. It made him make stupid choices, and make them too fast, because a choice was slightly less terrifying than no-choice. It ate his brain.

But he didn’t have to let the world know it. He could be cool. He could stand on two legs and pretend he didn’t want to hide like a serpent, coiled under the shade of a stone, hidden by branches, silent in fallen leaves.

The angel amazed him. He could see he was terrified, too. Those worry-lines on his brow, the tension in his voice, the slight defensive stance all told the demon that his angel was terrified, never sure what was going to lead to the Fall—or worse. But he still acted. He still chose. And chose so kindly!

It trapped Crawly. He wanted to copy the angel. He wanted to tempt the angel to copy him. He wanted to be a little better. He wanted the angel to be a bit worse.

They were so similar, he thought, fascinated. Mirror images—reversed but the same. Angel shone…

That left the role of dark angel, fallen angel, demon for him, though, and that just tumbled him back into terror. The best he could hope for, by his own reckoning, was to squeeze every moment of comfort and sloth and cruising creation he could out of the time he had. Eventually he’d reach an endpoint: whether God would catch him and unmake him, or Satan and all hell punish him for slacking and for outright philosophical treason and betrayal, or the Apocalypse would arrive, or he’d just be unable to bear the fear any longer and take a good long swallow of holy water, eventually it would end, and the demon who died with the most pleasures won.

He learned to take pleasure and fear together, in a complex cocktail of feelings.

He learned to hope—in lower-case letters, and never where Heaven or Hell could hear him. Never out loud.

God might hear him. But, then, God wasn’t listening any more than she was talking, was she?

He learned the hard way that gathering up pleasure hid traps for the unwary.

Like coming to be…fond…of his angel counterpart.

Trusting him enough to ask for the holy water. He shouldn’t have trusted. He should have understood that the angel was too Heavenly and Virtuous to understand the desire for that insurance. The silver bullet that would save him from the final pains.

It hurt for years after.

Hurt so bad…and trapped him. He slept for a long time, just to avoid facing the possible permanent loss. Even when he woke, he was cautious. Didn’t hang with his angel so much for years. When he did—he preferred to tease. To play the role: hero in black. It was easier to play brave that way. Easier to ride up and rescue his angel, and ride off without being compromised. Easier not to share the fear, now he knew the angel could betray him.

And then the bastard broke his heart.

He would always remember that night. Always. Sitting in the Bentley with that more-than-nuclear option sitting innocent as a baby in that damned thermos jug. Tartan print. Little Bakelite cup.

Angel sitting in the passenger’s seat, breaking into a thousand pieces, terrified he’d done the wrong thing again, terrified he’d done the right thing.

There was no win there for Angel, was there? And all down to the demon’s doing. All down to his own fear, spread like plague to his poor angel. His brave, valiant angel.

Crowley had felt like a big man saving his angel’s life. But here was his angel showing him up, gifting him with death—the power of choosing his own death.

It broke his heart. It terrified him. On some level he was grateful when Aziraphale told him he was too fast for the angel. He’d been terrified from the moment he offered to take the angel anywhere-anywhere at all—that he’d hurt them both. This was safer. So much safer.

And then the Anti-Christ arrived, and the Apocalypse was on…and the terror mounted higher, and higher, and it was harder and harder to act out the cool, put up the front.

They were going to die.

They were going to destroy each other and earth.

God alone might make it. Or Satan, he supposed, though his bet, like Aziraphale’s (though he would never admit it) was on God. Satan would never be more than a derivative work—a bad genre clone trying to supplant the original Power Above All Powers. But earth, and the hosts of heaven and hell, and all the glorious, shining wonderfulness of the world God had created? Gone in a twinkling, leaving silence and the dark. As it was in the beginning. Darkness on the face of the waters.

And Angel gone.

And Crowley gone.

And love gone.

And nothing ever again.

He who dies with the most pleasures has the most to lose. He was glad he hadn’t managed to move further with Angel.

He was terrified that he hadn’t. They could leave. Armageddon was a world-based thing. The stars with all their OTHER worlds were out there. God wouldn’t mind, would she?

Of course she would, but they could try. They could die trying.

His human, physical heart pounded all the time. The Anti-Christ was in the world. The Hellhound was named. The Four Riders were coming. The End had begun, and now the beginning had to end.

Terror. Thousands and thousands of years of terror, from the moments before the Fall onward. He’d swilled it down like the English swilled down tea. He’d glutted himself on it. It never left him. He slept to get away from it. He drank to get away from it—a demon who was not a physical alcoholic, but an emotional one.

A man in love with his angel—who knew his angel just didn’t feel the same. A man who couldn’t change a thing about that, not even kill himself. Not when Angel died. Not when Angel came back.

Angel.

When had Angel become the anchor of his terrified life? The steady point in the cyclone? The eye of the storm, the heart of the darkness, the soul of the body, the breath of the spirit?

Angel came back, with answers, and there was nothing for it but to try to defeat Heaven and Hell any way they could.

Terrified.

Angry.

He and Angel each trying to jockey the other into doing the deplorable, and killing the child. Hating themselves for it. Desperate to be spared the unforgivable.

He’d won.

He’d always remember that: kneeling on the tarmac, weeping for his car, and Aziraphale rising up, spine gone straight, and killing that guard. To protect that silly Witchfinder and Crowley.

Then taking the massive, damn-fool gun, and preparing to kill Adam.

For him. For Crowley. So Crowley wouldn’t have to. His angel. The sword-giving-away angel. The gentle one. The soft one—but strong as iron when he had to be. To protect the world, and his demon, and all.

And then, so help him, the kids had solved it for them. Some witch and her boy toy, and the not-so Anti-Christ, and his buddies, and a yapping rat terrier. Leaving him and his angel to do what they did best: make snarky comments and provide comic relief.

It was going to be all right.

Until it wasn’t…and the terror finally won.

He had no memory, then or after, of his Fall—from standing to supplicant, stricken to the ground with fear and submission. His Dark Lord was coming…the story was over. The fear had won.

Nothing left to do. Nothing left to pretend. No pride. No laughter. No hope. No courage. Nothing. Done. Over and done.

He should have just drunk the holy water and had done with.

He was sad. He was angry. Most of all, though was the fear rising in his gorge, forcing him to the ground, back to his first demon-self, Crawly, groveling, squirming on the ground, destroyed.

And then his angel stood above him, in his rage and his will, in the face of Satan himself approaching, and commanded him. And raised his sword—the flaming sword come back to him from the very beginning of Earth’s time.

Commanded him…

And instead of the threat of the sword, offered the threat of silence. Instead of calling on the power of Crowley’s fear, he called on Crowley’s love for him. Offered him the threat of lonely exile…and the option of rising up, and fighting back, and keeping his angel.

HIS angel. His. His from the start. His forever. His who loved him. His.

And he rose up, no longer Crawly, but Crowley, the clever one. The trickster demon. Stopper of time. Glorious in his power. Magnificent in his courage. Brave for his Angel. He rose and he commanded time itself, and he and Angel and the boy had time. Just a little time—but enough time for a happily ever after.

And they won.

From there on the fear was less—so much less he and his Angel were able to play Heaven and Hell for suckers together. He was brave enough to face Heaven for Angel, just as his brave, frightened Angel braved Hell for him.

And so it was, and so it would ever be, world filled with love, world without fear…

World without end…

World without end, without the terror, without the despair…

World without end…

He and his Angel…

World without end…

Amen.


End file.
